Powerful Visions For Non-polluting Coal Stoke Illinois Hopes

Based on the company's experience with its Louisiana prototype, the coal gas from the Wabash River plant should be far cleaner than required under the Clean Air Act. The law allows only 1.2 pounds of sulfur dioxide and 0.6 pound of nitrogen oxide emissions per million Btus of coal. Destec's process produces emissions of 0.02 pound of sulfur dioxide and 0.08 pound of nitrogen dioxide.

The plant will consume 2,550 tons of coal a day, or 700,000 tons a year. That's enough to keep one fair-sized mine operating, Underwood said.

Destec and Illinois coal boosters are counting on a demand for coal gas for a variety of reasons. About 55 percent of the power generated in the United States comes from coal-burning power plants, but many of those plants are like PSI's Wabash River station, which was built in the early 1950s.

"A lot of that infrastructure is aging and it's going to have to be retired or repowered," Roll said. "Repowering" is the term for updating an existing power station.

What options does an electric utility have when a plant gets old? Nuclear power may revive with a new generation of simpler, safer plants, but that is far from a certain bet given its persistently poor public perception and the unresolved issue of what to do with highly radioactive used fuel rods.

Natural gas is an alternative, but the Midwest is a long way from natural gas reserves.

A coal-burning utility can stick with coal and bring in low-sulfur varieties from the West. Or it could find a way to burn Midwestern coal, which is close at hand so that transportation costs are low.

One approach to dealing with emissions of sulfur dioxide is to use scrubbers, which take the sulfur dioxide out of emissions before they leave the smokestack. Scrubbers have gotten more reliable and less expensive to operate, but they are still costly and still a means of dealing with a problem after it has been created.

If gasification does not catch on, though, all is not lost for the state's coal industry. A research project at the Illinois Coal Development Park in Carterville is investigating the possibility of removing the sulfur in a coal-water mixture with air bubbles.

Another project involves burning a gaseous mixture of coal particles and water vapor and using the heat in ventilating systems to warm buildings.

Those projects are still at the "bench," or laboratory, stage. The Wabash River plant, by comparison, is a full-scale, full-power project, and Destec's Roll is optimistic about its chances for success.

"Because we operate a plant already, we know we can make this work," he said.